Claim Chowder: Anders Bylund

Thursday, 18 August 2011

I think I’ve mentioned this once or twice before, but it bears
repeating until it sinks in: the Apple iPad is not unique, nor
necessarily the best of breed in the media tablet sector it is
spearheading. And it ain’t gonna help Apple shareholders
any.

Sure, the iPad will sell a few million units to the Apple
faithful, of whom there are many. Being very little else than an
oversized iPod Touch, or an extra-large iPhone without the phone,
iPads will appeal to the same people who already use the minuscule
versions. But there’s a flash flood of competing products coming
up, and the iPad’s selling points of brand name, stylish design,
and familiar user experience will have a hard time overcoming what
it lacks, like running multiple programs at once, presenting a
full-featured Web experience with Adobe Flash support, or doing
anything you can’t already get in the smaller iPod or iPhone
packages.

Of course, the HP tablet he thought was going to kill the iPad wasn’t the TouchPad, but rather the Windows 7-running “slate” that Steve Ballmer heralded at CES in 2010. But it’s not like Bylund has ever done better. Here’s a bit from his self-linked “ain’t gonna help” piece, from just two months earlier, “Worst Stocks of 2010: Apple”:

You’ve heard all about stocks being “priced to perfection,” but
Apple is way beyond that stage already. It’s priced through the
fabled Reality Distortion Field, as though Steve Jobs will pull
out iPhone-class megahits until the end of time — meaning that
the iSlate will be a killer product, Macs will continue to steal
market share, and the iPhone will wade ankle-deep through the
blood and hydraulic oil of its many adversaries.

At the time, Apple’s stock price was around $200 a share. Since then, the “iSlate” has become a killer product, the Mac has continued to steal market share, and the iPhone 4 is the top-selling handset in the world. Today Apple’s stock closed at $366.